Which once again means absolutely nothing.  No miner is following the PCIe power standard.

You can do > 200W on a 6 pin connector.

The 75W and 150W aren't the technical limits they are part of the PCIe STANDARD.  No miner is using PCIe slots, no miner is doing wattage interogation on the PCIe bus, no miner is doing a ground sense on pins 7 & 8 to ensure they are compliant. 

75W and 150W is utterly irrelivent to mining.


Hint:  Have you looked closely at a 8 pin connector.  What are the extra two pins connected to? 

The PCIE 6 pin or 8 pin connector only has 3 current pins.  They both use Molex Minifit Jr connectors rated at 8 amps per pin.  3*8*12 = 288W ea.

The 75W & 150W limits are part of the PCIe standard which no miner is using, the connectors and wiring can handle much much more.  How much really depends on the PSU itself and what it is capable of delivering TO the connector.

You don't nee,d a GPU or cgminer.  Using the default miner built into the Satoshi client a high end CPU could mine 10-20 blocks per day.  For the first 6 months the average hashrate was <10 PCs and the next six months weren't much more.

If you had a computer, any computer you probably would get 5% to 10% of the blocks for the year.

Seller can always dispute a chargeback but given
a) seller promised delivery by day x
b) seller has not delivered at the time of chargeback
c) seller promised refunds up to the day of shipment.
c) buyer made good faith effort to make refund and was denied contrary to a,b & c above.

That is about as open and shut as it gets for credit card companies. 

BTW I don't think KNC is a "scam", I think they are working to ship as soon as possible and they likely will ship delayed but still magnitudes more timely than BFL but all that aside you don't accept orders under one set of terms, promise to allow refunds then break that promise and still not ship.   

Exactly the law doesn't recognize such clauses because imagine how easy it would be to scam with the full protection of the law.  Say KNC came out and said sorry due to unexpected delays we will not be shipping before Sept 2039 and due to our T&C you have no recourse.   A sale occurs when the product is shipped and the customer has paid.  Until then there is no sale just a sales order/contracts according to the UCC (which governs both business and consumer interstate sales contracts in the US).  Almost every country has similar provisions for the same reason.

Imagine buying a house and then the contractor says "sorry your house won't be ready for another 382 years and you can't get a refund because we said we aren't responsible for delays.

EU generally has better consumer protection but even in the US "all sales are final" only applies once there is a sale.   A SALE occurs when the product is exchanged for money.  Until that happens there is no sale just a sales order.   BFL (and now KNC) have no legal leg to stand on by taking preorders and not allowing cancellation.  If you ask for a refund and they have already shipped you likely are out of luck.

That is just human nature.  Every scam, foolish business venture, manipulation, or outright theft has already occurred countless times in the non Bitcoin world.  Credit card theft is a multi billion dollar a year enterprise.  Madoff conned tens of billions out of supposedly smart investors and for every Madoff their are a thousand less successful ponzis.  Penny stock pump and dumps have been around forever and people still fall for them today.  Hell people still wire money to Nigeria in order to pay the processing fees for their millions.

Agreed GPU miners in Europe other than those where someone else was paying the power bill ("free power") were the first to drop out.  Right now hardware costs dominate but over the next year prices will drop, mining margins will be compressed and just like GPU mining power will make up a larger portion of the bill.


One also has to consider the geopolitical risk as well.  Ask companies how much they lost when Chavez started nationalizing foreign assets in Venezuela.

Never is a strong word.  A company may have cheaper power and mining hardware (although I think in time margins will be so compressed it won't be much cheaper) but it has more expensive "everything else."  Imagine a hypothetical miner in 2015.   He buys mining boards (which by now are very low margin) he constructs his own case/frame powers it from his old ATX power supply, and puts it next to a window with a box fan.  Additional cost beyond hashing equipment and power: ~$0.00.

You can't do that for a PH/s or more.  Take the price of the business property lease, add in employees, add in security (you aren't going to leave you $50M in miners alone at night are you), add in insurance cost, add in fire suppression (might be mandatory in some areas), throw in business taxes, and pile on the additional energy and capital costs for 800 KW of industrial chillers, etc.   Even mundane stuff like enough racks to mount 1 PH/s (you aren't going to just leave them on the floor are you, and the cost of an electrician to run enough drops to power 1,000 or more systems all add up.  All those are Diseconomies of scale.  The company may be cheaper but GH/s but it isn't 10x cheaper like the raw power costs might suggest.  The last thing to consider is cost of capital.  After this gold rush period is over mining isn't a particularly attractive venture from a risk vs reward point of view.  Many investors may look at the small reward, the outsized risk, and the fact that profits are largely determined by the actions of outsiders and simply pass on the millions necessary to build up such a mining farm.


One thing I am particularly interested in is using the "waste heat".  For a large operation (say 1 PH/s = 800 KW = 1 million BTU/hr) they have a lot of waste heat but it has no value.  It actually has negative value as the company will spend money both on hardware and energy to remove that heat.  On the other hand a home user could use waste heat to preheat hot water (free hot water for the rest of your life), and in the winter supplement heating the residence.  With GPU rigs they are too bulky, complex, and skill intensive.  However take some ASICS put them in a compact sealed box, cold water in, hot water out and that "waste heat" suddenly has value.  I am doing some experiments right now.  Interesting stuff.

That being said I do believe large commercial players will make up a significant portion of the network capacity in the future.  I still think hobbyists and small home farmers will exist however they will be in areas of the world with lower than average energy prices (<$0.10 per kWh), generally cooler climates, and may look to thinks like using waste heat to boost ROI%.

It would look like he is incorrect.  Residential customers may be partially subsidized but they still pay more per kWh.  Then again with residential rates @ $15 per kWh in the long run it is unlikely they will be profitable.  Even leasing warehouse space to get large commercial rates wouldn't make much sense as they are still $0.09 per kWh.  There are parts of the US where large commercial power users pay <$0.03 per kWh.

http://www.nspower.ca/en/home/residential/billing/powerrates/default.aspx

It may vary from country to country or even power company to power company but generally speaking power companies offer lower rates for large commercial/industrial customers.  Small businesses generally pay about the same as residential but above 30KW prices are lower and above 200 KW or so they are significantly lower.  Also companies which need sustained power (i.e. 30KW continually over an entire month) can contract (they pay 30KW regardless of what their sustained usage is) and get even lower rates.   Power companies love sustained usage customers because it is much easier to calculate and load balance.

The first bolded section is somewhat out of context.  In the guidance FinCEN has NOT said that the transmission of virtual currency makes one a money transmitter*. The guidance states that exchanging virtual currency for real currency (or another virtual currency) may (in some instances) be classified as money transmission.  It is important to note that money transmission has a specific legal meaning beyond just money and a transfer.  For example a merchant which accepts credit card payments and issues refunds or affiliate payments is transmitting money.  In most cases they aren't a money transmitter.   All commerce involves the transfer of money but the overwhelming majority of commerce doesn't fall under FinCEN definition of a money transmitter.  


Then again FinCEN guidance on virtual currencies is so vague and nonsensical at times it is hard to know if they even know what they are saying or if what they wrote means what they think it means.  Honestly I don't think FinCEN fully understands Bitcoin and decentralized virtual currencies in general.

It was unrelated to this administrative ruling (I filed two others) but FinCEN "guidance" on virtual currencies even contradicts its prior guidance on the exchange of real currencies.  In at least three separate cases FinCEN concluded that a company which offers as a service to its clients the exchange of one real currency for another real currency is not a money transmitter even if it engages in the transmission of money IF that transmission is integral to another business motive, namely the conversion of foreign currencies (FOREX).

So if both the guidance on virtual currencies and the prior administrative rulings on foreign exchange are taken at face value:
The service to exchange one real currency for another real currency ( USD -> EUR or EUR->USD ) = NOT A MONEY TRANSMITTER (in some instances)
The service to exchange one real currency for one virtual currency ( USD -> BTC or BTC->EUR ) = MONEY TRANSMITTER
The service to exchange one virtual currency for another virtual currency ( BTC -> LTC or LTC->BTC ) = MONEY TRANSMITTER

A case can be made that FinCEN ruling is overly broad and capricious.

Will do.  They are suppose to respond within 30 days but it took more like 50 on the first response.  The clarification was sent back about 3 weeks ago.  On advice of counsel I decided not to make their response public while it is still openly being reviewed. 

This.  Some people just like working with electronics.  Hell I have bought a (small number) of ASICs just to experiment with immersion cooling.   It might pay off, it might give me free hot water & heat for life, or it might just be an interesting experiment.  Lots of people have built custom Folding@Home rigs with no chance of financial payoff. 

The same reason people spend lots of money on fixing up cars, or building a kit airplane, or modding computer cases.

True I just think it won't be that high for a couple reasons.  Then again if it is then KNC customers are screwed either way.   If they need to ship that much and can't customers are screwed by late shipments.  If they need to ship that much and can then difficulty explodes so high (even assuming nobody else ships anything) that the returns are crushed.

The good news is I think KNC pre-order amount is probably lower.  The round about reason is KNC die size is probably large.  The fact that they are the only company not to release die size information, the large package size, and the high (on a relative basis) power consumption makes me think the die is 400mm2 to 600mm2.  That means less chips per wafer and KNC is a well run enough company they would put the first order in once they hit the batch size (usually 50 wafers) rather than wait (and take longer to get chips).

Edit: I just realized I wrote 500 above, I was thinking 1,000 per day. 

Some people have what I believe are unrealistic expectations on the amount of KNC orders.  I have seen projections wild ass guesses as high as them shipping 1,000 units 500 PH/s 500 Units (0.25 PH/s) per day.

Thanks.

I will bookmark this thread of awesome and use it as a reply when someone complains about the noob forum restrictions. 

This.  Time for these so called "Bitcoin experts" to be ridden out of town on a rail.  I mean the comments are just sad.  His logic is like saying US based HFT is impossible because a bank wire takes a couple minutes to an hour to clear.  Obviously you can't trade stocks in seconds because bank wires take longer than that.

As for the BIT, is it the cheapest way to acquire Bitcoins?  No.  Will people find it useful anyways?  Hell yeah.  You think some billionaire wants to try and figure out how to send money to the Magic the Gathering Online Exchange?  Of course not.  Time is money and he will be happy to give the BIT.  The fees may be higher but not that high.  Anyone think early round venture capital investing is fee free?  Someone using this fund isn't looking to make 2% to 3% a year.  They are taking a risk position.  They are looking for the value to double, triple, quadruple and they no there is a non-zero chance it could go to zero.  2% to 3% in fees is really nothing when the expected gains OR losses are a magnitude more.

Actually it rarely happens in offshore locations.  Take Belize for example there has never been a single cent of depositor loss in the 40+ years it has operated as an offshore banking location.

Why?  Because it is a death blow to the economy.  Generally offshore banks have very high minimums, high fees, and low (or more commonly no) interest.  The only reason people use them is reputation.  Cyprus is done for, they are the Yifu of offshore banking.  The entire country will be in recession for the next decade or so.

There are lots of reasons to keep money offshore beyond just evading taxes.  Off shore trusts are a very effective way to ensure you CAN'T be forced to remit funds back to your host country.  Very useful if you no longer trust your own government.  They are also useful in legal tax avoidance (evasion = illegal, avoidance = legal) to reduce tax liability.

No Cyrpus lost.  Generally speaking people don't put money into banks which seize it.   Offshore banking is ~60% of Cyrprus GDP, or maybe I should say was 60%.